I hope to comment more later as Kavalier and Clay may rate as the best fiction I've read this year thus far. But for now I will simply say this: if you wish to be a writer they tell you to read what you wish to write. And this is true, but for one scathing exception. Do not read Michael Chabon. You will find yourself so inundated with his lyrical phrases so caged in by his perfectly crafted metaphor and so invested in his human yet wildly foreign characters that you will fear to ever write another word. I fear for the rest of my writing life I will have Kavalier and Clay ringing in my ears, holding me to their hire wire standard, leaving me thinking: "If only I could write like that."